The boy you love says, I’m going to **** you.
                  So you let him.
You let him take you home and
          you sit in his room while
                          the heat from his fingertips lingers on the doorknob.
         The steam from the shower
                         curls like smoke into the room
and he wants to swallow you whole,
         so you jump right into his mouth.
                       It’s wet.
                                It’s hot.
                                          You can’t breathe.

                      This is Unbearable.

But you get to be with him
           —in a corner of him—
                       lying on his balcony.
This is what you wanted.
           So these rusty bars that crisscross over his heart,
                      this forgotten half of an apple,
the rawness of your body—
                      you asked for it.

You had booked a ticket to this ****** cave—
                     to breathe in him, with him,
                                 exhale him.
            And now you get to taste him,
                     drink of him, drown in him,
                                die from him.

But you’re waiting for him to turn the shower off,
        turn the sky on,
                  nick away the black and paint it blue again,
        blow a few white clouds into the emptiness.

And you hear him—hands on your handle—turn it off.
                 But the water keeps running.
                                This doesn’t make sense, you say.

The water gushes down the glass pane,
        wets your pain.  
                 Your arteries pump this water.
                        I’m not thirsty, you say.

But the water is still running and
        his chest is thunder, his mouth is granite.
There’s no lightening to light your way out,
                   no way to see the clock.
        This never-ending minute,
                   this hour of forever,
                            the ocean that flows back up into the river.
This is all wrong, you say.
       But he doesn’t hear you
                  because his body is covering yours,
                             crushing yours.
A cracked sternum,
       some water in your lungs,
a little blood in your tears
                 —but it’s okay, because he gave it to you.

And you deserve this, you do…
        to remain here in static acid forever
                       so you don’t forget.

The boy bit my thigh,
              sharpened the left blade of my shoulder,
couldn’t remember my name
             or the warmth of my blood.
But he memorized the place in the river
            where my body was thrown
                      —a stone, some silt,
                                 the scales of a trout.

But even with these, he’s still left

            drenched in his own body.

Let us pretend, beloved, that
this is the skin you wore yesterday.
Allow me to lick the salt from your
lips and I’ll ignore the black dog
who at night, stalks my fire escape
and feasts upon the lull of a sleepless—sleep.
The dog who drags me back from
the cliffs of a steady breath
and bites salt from my lips.

I want to take this dog.
I want to see her —your her—
knot her fingers in its shabby fur,
and flail beneath its jaw.
So I can see the inside of her body—
all thinness—a red delicacy.
I want to see which vein you loved,
so I can know for sure
that you have been there:
the muscle —a tendon— the tightening
of how you were inside her.

But I feel the bloom of your iris
steal into the pound of my chest,
so I forgive how these
hands —broken hands—
never tore through my hair.

My pupils just fill with bowed heads
and pleading wrists
while the dog gnaws
at the break of my ankles.

And in this little moan of bloodied floor
and sodden wood,
the kiss of your mouth
grazes my neck’s snap—
your fingers trickle up my thigh

into a little pool of Never Enough.

You had tried to warn me about the time
the power line snapped
while all the birds were asleep—

but the dog had torn my ears from me by then.

Knowing you, I am like a girl
                                  who willfully touches hemlock to her tongue.
For among the boney noose of pearls
                   strung up my spine,
                                 you, with hands that can hold
        both knives and violin bows
                                                leak a piece of air into the streams of my back
And I let you—I
                      let it fever its way around stringy tethers,
       up to the oven of blood in my head
                                                        whil­e you lick your lips (the moon pours out)
and I do not watch this
                                 because now I cannot even trample
         across floors of lemongrass  
                                or brace the line of my jaw for a tender fist.
The earth simply throws a plump tomato at my chest
                                               smirks simmering in its oceans  
                           but all I can do is fall there
                                                lay near  
                                                         ­   lose years
                                                                ­      expire here—
(the sodden match)
(the hot scoop of iced cream)
                               while the froth of my heart grows cold and colder.

So I can’t even smash your head                   (a skull I love)
                        into the wooden wall until it is as  
                                                            ­   soft as a boiled pomegranate.
          For my own flesh is a puddle of sputters on the kitchen table
                                                 ready for you to eat *(dine, my darling, dine!)

Knees quake, stagnant faces caressed
smearing red, smearing salt across painted dress.
Some eyes barren, some eyes gone,
stomachs lurched and stomachs drawn.
Mountains with their moss play bed to fallen boys,
to their wasted lungs powder does still cloy.
Rivers play mother’s cool arms
washing way the mess of harm.
Within in the field are stepping stones of flesh,
made colored canvas with wounds still fresh.

These boys have died a thousand deaths
a thousand different ways
sometimes several thousand a day
losing each and every choke of air.
All morning rebirth is an unlucky fate,
for fellow friend’s faces freeze
mid-word
mid-breath
mid-life.
Their warm splatter upon your skin,
a hole in their head you were yours.  

And these bullets, these bayonets
are bombarded on you,
on your boys
by your brothers.
Who you have loved.
Who you have touched.
With whom you have sung your song.

These boys
Are not fighting for cause or crime
or love
or what heats the mind.
You fight.
You die.
Your bodies are reborn.
You bleed
for those seeming Caesars
for those napping Napoleons
who dust powdered sugar off their
plump lips and
canter over each cobblestone as if it were a country.

Sorrow is a hot flush of prickle
salt filled pearls that spill over
the dry reds of your cheeks.
Sorrow is the swollen ache in your
throat that tugs down on the corners
of your mouth:
gravity that seeks to bring
nose to grass,
forehead to gravel:
the little razor
that dig into your blackened flesh.

Sorrow is the way your own arms
seize themselves:
freckle to freckle,
hand to hand,
all identical and opposite.
Sorrow is knowing that
all sounds coming out of your
own mouth and all self-caressing
comfort is utterly
and irrevocably
and inexplicably  
vain.

Sorrow is the cool glass
you smash your brow against
in reflective attempts to cool
poundings in your temple
and calm the only constant of life:
drumming, hot-blood pumping
four-chambers that will one day
Fail You.
Sorrow is dirt you inhale
into your starved lungs when
it buries your head in
earthy embrace
awaiting your thrashing to grow still
as you’re shushed like an animal
before butcher until
your hair blows gently
in the wind.

Sorrow is the way pain like fire
licks every crevice of your sweet skin
until molted scars like old corpses
swallow you whole
making you utterly
and irrevocably
and inexplicably
unrecognizable.

Sorrow is the eyes of your friends
refusing to meet your own
until the flicking of blues and greens
and browns and blacks
to any place besides
the empty whites of your own
is dizzying
is numbing:
an electric buzzing of static
in grey matter.

Sorrow is an invisible hand
wrapping gently around your neck
pushing you under the oceans
of your own briny making
until your foam kissed lips
are blue and cold—

parted slightly in a dead hope
that someone will revive them.

Sorrow is the vice clenching
bloodied tissue of
your battered
and bruised heart
tightly

and tighter still.

Until it is stagnant.
Until it is inconstant.

Until it’s too late to tell anyone


what

sorrow

is.

Black robes, white collars,
eyes black as night and fiery voices
that of pretense speak.
While threat of hell from a mouth
does leak.

“Your Tongues are Wicked.
Your Fight Against Flesh is Weak.
Your Bodies are Marred and Seek
to Commit Evils in Covert Speech.
Your Dress is Too Red,
Your Lips Too Sweet,
Your Skin Creamy Enough to Make
Man Weep.
From Their Wives They Will Stray.
for This, You are to Blame, My Daughter.
Repent.”

Cross myself, Father, I will.
Again and again.
Hail my Mary, Father, I will.
Again and again.
To stone saints I will kiss and pray
to intervene for my sin.
Flesh I will eat and blood I will drink
and pass to my kin.

“Come to Me Later Alone, My Daughter
and I Will Help You Kneel and Pray
to Cleanse Your Conscience
of the Things That Make You Stray.
I’ll Put Your Hand to Your Breast and
Your Mouth to My Feet So That Your
Soul Can Be at Rest.”

Father, you’re bleeding,
from your back, from your thigh.
What have you done to make yourself
in pain sigh?
I did not know that your God required
Blood and Hurt.
Is it mine that he seeks to reign?

“Daughter, If You Bow to Me
I Will Show You Why and How.
His Sword I Will Brandish
And His Armor I Will Myself Shield.
Here, Look Down and With
Your Collar Embrace and Yield.”

- blood stains the floor, another
lost and her soul takes flight to a place
of higher or lower cost –

Children, look at what religion has done.
Children, never know the meaning of Fear.

I trace my fingers along your smooth,
Porcelain hold
And I decide yes.
Yes, I want you tonight.
Because I am cold
And your heat is enticing.
I sink my body slowly  
Into your hot embrace,
A sigh passing my mouth,
While waves of warm relief
Cascade down my body and face.
I roll and writhe in your hard grasp;
It’s loud like a waterfall
So I try to speak to you, but you’re thunder
And I am pounded down until I gasp.
I’m clean, I’m new, I’m shiny, I’m wet.
My painted face is gone, so I look like a child
With the wide eyes, except for the *******,
And sensation that is nothing like regret.
But my time with you is spent:
It’s growing colder because heat doesn’t last.
And my skin is speckled with chill bumps
Because your skilled, cooled fingers are still bent
On coaxing sighs and smiles from my lips.
But you have to leave now:
Down the drain,
Like the wantonness from the dip of my hips.
I open my eyes and I’m alone.
I was always alone.
A red mouth from the glass of wine in my hand,
Burning candles that must be blown,
Tiled walls and tiled floors glazed with water,
And perfumed bubbles still
Hanging in the strands of my hair.
Because I’ve been in the bathtub with
Hints of steam still in the air.

There are birds.
The birds are pursuing you.
The birds are silver
And their reflections
Are just that more brilliant
Gliding over the ocean.

It’s so beautiful,
But you don’t notice.
Because you don’t know
That the grass is green
Or that the sun is shining
Or that the birds are singing.

Only, the birds are singing…
Screaming, rather.

But you know it’ll stop soon.
And you notice
That you could be on vacation,
If it weren’t for the screaming silver birds.
But the birds will be silent soon
And silent birds make for crying women
And fatherless children.

You could be on vacation.
Because the sky is so blue
And the clouds are so white
Like the innocence you used to have.
And you wish you could smell the air.
But all you notice is the smell of
Fear and gasoline
And melting chocolate in your pocket.

The silver birds flying behind you
Are angry and they want you to fall
Out of the sky.
But all you know is that you want it
To be quick and painless.

The screaming grows louder
So you know your wings are hurt
So you dive. Unwillingly.
And all you can think about
Is your girl and how she’s going to cry
And how your boy isn’t going to know you.
He’ll just be told that you were a hero,
Not that you were scared of silver birds.

So the birds, both angry and silver, crash into the ground,
But the wreckage isn’t made of feathers.
All you know is that you wish it were.
It’s so beautiful
You could be on vacation
Because you’re lying in a field of flowers.
And they’re as brilliant as the ocean was.

But those flowers are burning,
And the sky is orange, the clouds ashen,
And the grass is slick with blood
And you don’t know where the ocean is.

So you realize that you’re not dead
Because you’re covered in red
And everything hurts.
And the screaming hasn’t stopped.
Your men are lying around you with torn feathers…

Bleeding.

The angry birds that brought you to this place
Are broken too. Fallen too.
So you don’t hate them anymore
Because it doesn’t matter that their
Feathers are different colors than yours.
Their girls are crying and their boys
Won’t know them either.

And through the pain all
You can cry is Mother, Mother!
And through the pain all
The angry birds can cry is Mutter, Mutter!
Until all the birds are silent.

It's quiet now...
You could be on vacation.

How beautiful is the innocence of a child?
So lofty in spirits, so in character undefiled.
So pure and untainted are their wants of the world;
But yet how it wishes to see them unfurled.
Ah, to be that free.
To laugh and be honestly happy with no degree,
No constraints, no limitations of their soul.
Youth: our one chance to be whole.
How I would like to be that child
Who runs in the field and falls with consequences mild;
Only to then immediately get back up and continue to play.
If only life could be that easy day by day;
Up and down, up and down.
But alas, we are confined by our sins that drown
Us in ambition, power, lust, and greed;
Things that poison our innocence in thought, word, and deed.
As I reach for it in the high, high tree
I realize its branch is rotten, so I fall to my knees.
Because to strive for this innocence does not belong to me anymore
It belongs to the child and the child is no more.

How I love that grin, that smile
That makes my own lips turn
Towards heaven. Or is it hell.
Oh that they could meet.
Oh that your fingers could graze my wrist
Or cheek to seek my flesh, if not
Only by mistake.
You give me reason and reverence
To stay finger width apart.
I fear your touch would burn,
And sear that I might flee.
To hasten away from
Your presence that I suffer.
For you drive daggers deep
Into my heart, my flesh, my mind.
But my cares for you reign in my want,
For which you should be thankful.
With you pain becomes my master
And my lover and I know not
The difference between the two.
Everyday my life begins and then ends.
For your presence is like lightning
And I seek to be struck by it’s bright death daily.
Do you not see the lively sparks
Cascading down the rivers of my eyes?
Down the contours of my neck
To their grave within the thud
Of an empty heart.
But everyday I return to receive
The painful punishment of a lack
Of air that I desperately
Seek to fill my lungs.
I love your ignorance to my pain.
I love how you fail to notice
My trembling brow and quivering lip.
Or am I too unaware?
Perhaps your hands fill a blank page
With sorrowful strife and twisted tongue.
Perchance we are both bound with what will
Always go unspoken, unfulfilled, and unloved.
And our shame is ******
And our folly is to our own charge.
For there will come that day when
Your hand touches my breast
Only to find it’s beat forever at rest.

These summery days have lifted my heart;
This world and people did them depart.
For your company alone,
Many would bemoan.
And since it is so,
I still cry: it is a great loss that you are all gone.
Each soul that lifted mine so high above the trees
Have slipped their hold,
And now your loving souls are gone.
Some to the nothingless north,
Some to the sickly south,
And each tongue and mouth
So spread apart and out
That there is nothing left but silence
Where our words and thoughts used to loudly be.
And now what are my fallish days left with?
Just ambitious souls who care not for me,
But simply hasten to climb
As thunder rolls.

My desire is a woman’s desire.
It is cold, very icy, quite unlike fire.
A desire that is calculating and cruel;
One that turns all love into a tool.
A knife to use at my leisure;
To each grief it meets it measures.
It is insatiable with no ending in mind.
A desire that is not patient, not loving, not kind.
It lacks smile, emotion, and colorful tone.
Because it simply seeks it’s own.
A desire in which love is not subject.
Only touching and games are in effect.
When my desire is through, is bored
And you are lovesick and your heart has soared.
I will take my ice and ****** it deep
To leave you dying and without words to speak.
Only then will I be sated and filled;
Ready to add you to my score of the others killed.
But if comfort or relief can be surmised,
In the end it will be my heart led to demise.
So please gaze, enjoy, covet, despise
And watch my tragic trial with your eyes.

I sing of tales of timeless love
And stories of old;
Of icy maidens, broken roses,
And other things of this nature told.
Of the cons of man so easily
Governed by a beautiful face
That caused screaming tongues and
Petty warplay between different race;
How is it that bloodlust can be heated by the blush of a brow,
The façaded modesty, and the occasional stolen kiss?
How a single idea that changed histories came from
Seemingly mellifluous nothings; never amiss
In the ear of a powerful man
Simply given in the warmth of his bed.
Those faces who burnt cities, spilled blood,
And revolutionized religions instead:
In mythical Rome, in all of Europe overthrown,
In the stems of roses without thorns.
These ideas that come from the tongue of a woman,
Thence through the mouth of a man are born.
The young, wailing words turn into deeds
And change the world as it was known to be.
Though the players differ in being,
The overall game continues to remain the same;
The faces of the skillfully seductive are ever forgotten,
Replaced with potent names.
The names of man cover our dusty papers and books
While the lips of our kind simply give men the sin that they have took.

For I have loved and I have been loved.
I have loved softly, I have loved cruelly.
But what comforts can these be of.

So will you forget me thus?

For you have touched the secret parts of my body, my skin
And I have given you a new life of your own.
Will you love her? Or will you not touch what you believe is sin.

So will you forget me thus?

You called me a daughter, you called me a lover
And I trembled under your severe stare.
I held my tongue when you gazed at a modest other.

So will you forget me thus?

I have remembrances of yours given out of care
In the sun, in the garden, under a tree’s branches.
The token of sadness on my finger that to my breast I bear.

So will you forget me thus?

In your wealth and in your woe have I stood you by
Until your heart became strong enough to carry any moan.
My face, my soul, my wit had made you stir, made you sigh.

So will you forget me thus?

Have you no piteous heart, have you no pious heart
That was taught to forgive by your former office.  
I fear that grace has forever evaded you in an eternal depart.

So will you forget me thus?

It was by the fates alone that we both did stray
Our folly, our shame is to neither of our conscience charge.
But in my disgrace I fled to the cool country until my body’s decay.

So will you forget me thus?

In you I will find no peace for my wars are all fought;
Instead I wait here to in fire burn or in ice freeze.
For surely both are better than to be in your mirth caught.

So will you forget me thus?

When my soul soon soars from this world to either or
Which fate will please you: heaven or hell.
Surely your hate is as powerful as your love, if not more.

So will you forget me thus?

My ravishing revenge and delight is the source of our strife;
Its affects will feed your sorrow and laugh in your pain.
You no longer have for me a stern smile or in me a loyal wife.

So will you forget me thus?

I will miss your face that I did trace with my fingers in affection;
Your steady voice that loved me once and your palm that did brush my cheek.
You desired what I was not able or willing to give, perfection.

So will you forget me thus?

Now, my breath slows and my mind grows dim,
My soul quickens, it hurries to that far western gate;
Here my thoughts are of you where I lie in stone, grim.  
For happy is the life that ends in such a lovely state.

So will you forget me thus?

Some cry that ice will soon soothe the fire.
But from what I know of the things that threaten my desire,
I tend to favor that which saves when my need is dire;
To choose either would be proud, for each I do so greatly admire.

Some cry that fire will burn away the ice.
But from what I know of the things that entice,
I tend to favor that which all pain could suffice;
Only if the costs of hurt were worth the price.

Some cry that to grace one above the other would mean to die,
But from what I know of treachery it would taste a lie
To say that my mind, my heart did not one side deny:
Although, thoughts of both still leave me with an aching sigh.

Some cry that to deny both would still lead to my demise,
But from what I know of two-piece hearts, they always themselves despise;
So I tend to favor nothing, for all end in a heart’s destruction, not a rise
While all fire and ice simply watch the inner trial with their eyes.

I once was a white rose: pure, perfect, plain.
Then the world did pluck my petals away.
I became blackened by the world’s disdain

Further I fought against the worlds pained
Raze of roses: they won and crushed my stem.
I once was a white rose: pure, perfect, plain.

The gardened battlefield was strewn and stained
With the sweet stench of broken, bullied roses.
I became blackened by the world’s disdain.

The white rose ***** of virginity strained
Against hands calloused by the world’s black sin.
I once was a white rose: pure, perfect, plain.

Despite valiant efforts that were in vain,
We allowed our petals to be torn away.
I became blackened by the world’s disdain.

And you, my worldly gardener, did tame
We white roses out of our innocence.
I once was a white rose: pure, perfect, plain.
I became blackened by the world’s disdain.